


Malachor

by justsomerain



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Ahsoka-centric, Angst, Episode: s02e19-20 Twilight of the Apprentice, Gen, Internal Monologue, Malachor, Mortis (Star Wars), Post-Episode: s02e19-20 Twilight of the Apprentice, Rebirth, The Daughter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsomerain/pseuds/justsomerain
Summary: "She knows him in the moment their lightsabers strike one another. He had never been there afterwards, not if she looked for him, hoping against hope to find a hint of him in the Force, and if she ever felt anything she told herself she was deluding herself."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A character study of sorts, Ahsoka's thoughts and feelings during Malachor. I've no clue how to tag this properly. Lots of pretentious pseudo-poetic language use.

She knows him in the moment their lightsabers strike one another. He had never been there afterwards, not if she looked for him, hoping against hope to find a hint of him in the Force, and if she ever felt anything she told herself she was deluding herself. It was impossible, after all these years. Her master was dead, her friend, her brother, no more, nowhere to be found.

But old bonds break hard, no matter how hard he must have tried, if he is even still himself in that black suit. He had always been intense, his anger sometimes getting the better of him, she had seen it, during the Clone Wars, times when she was not sure if he would be able to fight it, shaking off the thought the moment it passed. He was the Chosen One, her master, her friend, and he couldn’t become, couldn’t be this thing, this murderous man, machine.

For a moment she thinks of running, but she was never one to run from a difficult position. He had taught her that. You don’t run, you think of something and you fight and fight and fight. These odds are ones you can overcome.

But these odds seem for a moment to be insurmountable. 

When she hides in the shadows on Malachor he is distracted, black mask turning back to the temple, and she wishes dearly that Kanan and Ezra have the presence of mind to escape while they can, with their lives, battered and bruised but alive. When she follows, still in the shadows, this isn’t the case.

Kanan was a Padawan when she was, years younger, but the boy was never a Jedi, a Padawan to a Padawan, made Jedi only by association, but she has known since she met him that sometimes this is what happens. She’s glad, that something of these old ways remain, hopes for a better way, hopes that Kanan might teach him better than they were taught.

And he has, because the boy is still on Malachor, stayed behind to help, he and Kanan not escaped with their lives, but prey to this dark mask, dark cloak, to a man who was once her friend. She sees Ezra being dragged closer and closer and there is but one thing she can do, even if her heart hurts, has been hurting since she discovered who he was.

She strikes at the monster’s mask, thrown down by him, and when she looks up he rasps her name, almost but not entirely her master, her friend, Anakin. 

Again, and he sounds more himself, more like he used to, one once blue eye showing through the broken mask, almost kind, almost like she had once seen him, before everything. Their bond flares up, and the feeling of Anakin being alive almost overwhelms her. She is not alone. She wasn’t alone already, but she is really not alone now, but their exchange cuts it short.

As soon as he lights his saber the connection is severed, nothing remaining of the man she once knew, who taught her, only monster now, heartless but not mindless. She can hear Ezra cry out, reach for her and she pushes him back, out of the way, because this is not fight to be taken lightly, not something to bring a Padawan, a child into.

Fights, wars, never are.


	2. Chapter 2

She blocks his saber, and he wastes no time, nothing left of who he once was, no hesitation, moves to kill, not to teach like he once had, a hint of the familiar in this fight, echoing sparring matches from the past, when she was young and had believed things may go well. There is not much afterwards, and she does not remember much afterwards.

One moment she is fighting a man machine who was once her friend, the next she limps away, clutching her side, smoke all around her, a familiar feeling enveloping her, one she hasn’t felt in years and years, as she passes a doorway, into the dark, deeper into Malachor.

She knows what happened when she was sixteen. She, and two others, both gone, were there, none beyond, and that was a story never told. It seemed too strange, even in a galaxy as big as theirs. The Force could do much, without a doubt, but things such as they had seen on Mortis none of them had been able to imagine. She knows that she died on Mortis, her life should have ended, never to experience all that came after.

The thought that death could be reversed, stopped, cheated, was one nobody would have believed, none of them could have believed if not seeing it with their own eyes, experiencing it themselves.

The feeling of… It had felt as if waking from the deepest sleep she had ever been in, both exhausted and energetic at the same time, the body of the Daughter laying beside her, her life given to her for reasons she could only guess at. A paradoxical state of being where you were both one thing and another, without it seemingly being possible. 

It was a feeling she hadn’t felt in what must have been sixteen years again, and her lips quirk at the symmetry of it. Sixteen and sixteen, death bookended by two equal slices of life.

She can feel the convor now, following her, perching here and there as she follows a path without thinking, she follows it as wades through water thick as blood, warm as a bath, in half light. It follows her, and she knows it, even if she does not in this form, it is different than it was sixteen years ago, no longer a whole, but part, a piece of a puzzle and she the other. 

When she reaches the end she speaks to it but doesn’t question it. She would have, in another life, but it’s no use asking questions to which you already know the answer. Asking again does not change the answer, it doesn’t change what will happen, neither to her nor to others, but she was part of something greater this day, moreso even than before, and she knows it will have lingering effects, effects that will be shown in years and years. Now she knows.

And she knows that this is how it is supposed to be, even if she mourns that the effect will not take hold faster. It will happen, and balance will be restored. She has played her part.


End file.
